Book Review Assignment

Your review should be analytical and critical, rather than descriptive. You should include descriptions and discussions from the book in the course of advancing an argument or thesis of your own. Articulate your own perspective on the ideas expressed in the book. Reviews should be typed, with standard margins, font faces, and sizes.

Questions to consider in writing the book review:

What is the book author's argument?
Does the author present sufficient evidence to support his/her argument?
What is the author's method (both in research and analysis)?
Is the author trying to revise any assumptions held by other historians? Is he successful at it?
Do you agree with the substance of the author's argument?
In what ways do you think the author might have done things differently?

For examples of book reviews that can help you in writing this paper, check out reviews in journals Public Culture and Reviews in American History

List of Possible Books to Review

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.

Aparicio, Frances R. Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998.

Atkins, E. Taylor. Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001.

Breckenridge, Carol Appadurai, ed. Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

Chasteen, John Charles. National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

Curtin, Michael, and Lynn Spigel, eds. The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict. New York: Routledge, 1997.

DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.

Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. New York: Times Books, 1999.

Glasser, Ruth. My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Graham, Allison. Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Hayes, Joy Elizabeth. Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-1950. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.

Jackson, Jeffrey H. Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Manuel, Peter Lamarche. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Ozersky, Josh. Archie Bunker's America: TV in an Era of Change, 1968-1978. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.

Rabinovitz, Lauren. For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Rubenstein, Anne. Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

Waxer, Lise. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

Starr, S. Frederick. Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Zhang, Yingjin, ed. Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Zolov, Eric. Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.